


Heartsease

by ignaz



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Crowley Loves Kids (Good Omens), Discussion of Slurs, Flirting, Humor, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Reclaiming of Slurs, quite a lot of silliness, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-08 04:50:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20316007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignaz/pseuds/ignaz
Summary: “Pansy?” the demon scoffed. “Pansy? Do I look like a fuckingflowerto you?”





	Heartsease

**Author's Note:**

> Content Note: This story contains canon-typical slurs used in a spirit of reclamation, self-identification, and love. It is also extremely silly. If either of those things is likely to bother you, I hope you’ll enjoy one of my other stories instead. Otherwise, carry on.

Lucifer left, finally, which was a relief. He’d been a complete tosser since the fall of Rome.

Everyone else at the airfield—four children, one baffled dad, a young witch and witchfinder, an old witch and witchfinder, one pristine angel, and one sooty demon—well, they were alright. Eleven in all, could have been a half-decent football team, even accounting for the dozen unconscious American soldiers, and for the angel, who was rubbish at sport.

It was time for denouements, for happily ever afters. It was time for Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell to have a conniption.

Shadwell had experienced a number of shocking realizations in the last day. Most were in fact delusions, but he’d also had one that was fairly accurate—and, depending on one’s point of view, rather nice.

Mr. Crowley the Younger and the prissy southern pansy, his oldest (and only) clients, stood close together, looking at each other with great emotion. Shadwell had not known they were acquainted, let alone associates, certainly not intimates. He also had not known they were supernatural beings, from Hell and Heaven, respectively, capable of powers beyond the scope of the human mind, but that was not at the moment his primary concern.

He reeled in horror, pointing at them with a shaking hand. “You—both of you! _Both_ pansies?!”

“Mr. Shadwell!” gasped an affronted Madame Tracy, who’d befriended quite a few pansies in her time, not to mention poofters and nancy boys. Absolute dears, all of them. She’d got a good portion of her wigs from the drag queens.

“Pansy?” the demon scoffed. “_Pansy?_ Do I look like a fucking _flower_ to you?”

The angel had been recently employed as a gardener, and though he’d mostly kept on by way of miracles, he had learnt a great deal about horticulture and was eager to share. “Perhaps some sort of creeping vine,” he suggested.

Crowley threw the angel a saucy smile. He’d just driven a burning car through a wall of flames, faced down the Devil himself, and saved the world—well, a bit—and felt positively invigorated.

“Always thought of myself as more of a fairy, really,” he said. “Scary buggers, fairies. Stealing children. Collecting teeth. More my style.”

“You’ve never stolen a child,” Aziraphale said.

“I have, I stole a whole passel once in Egypt.”

“You ‘stole’ them from a Hittite slave trader.”

“Exactly!”

“And then you hid them with the soldiers’ orphans in Athens—”

“Do you know how much that Hittite would have got for them? Ten thousand drachmas, easy!”

“—where they were guaranteed food and shelter—”

“It was the heist of the century! It was diabolical! I got a commemorative plaque!”

“—and freedom, and dowries for the girls—”

“Well, I had to get rid of them somehow! You ever try to move that much contraband?”

“_Rescued_, my dear boy. You _rescued_ a passel of children. You might as well say you ‘stole’ me from the Bastille…or those dreadful Nazis.”

The demon maintained the impressive capacity to leer even with his eyes covered in dark sunglasses. “Didn’t I?”

The angel smiled bashfully.

“What on God’s green earth is going on here?!” shouted Arthur Young, who had just arrived on scene and was beginning to feel a bit lost. “Who are all you people?!”

Crowley snapped his fingers, and time stopped. Every mortal entity assembled froze in place—nearly every mortal entity, at least.

“Cool,” said Adam Young.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Crowley asked Aziraphale.

“Oh! A grapevine!” said the angel. “A smooth, dark Sangiovese.”

“That it’d be smashing for us to clear off before the police arrive. Or worse, more Americans. Loads of guns, Americans. Very heavy moral arguments...”

“We are on a military base, dear,” Aziraphale said. “There could hardly not be guns.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve already been discorporated once today. It would be a shame to see that lovely new form of yours riddled with bullet holes.”

“No one is going to shoot us.” Aziraphale ducked his brand new-ish eyes, coquettishly, and fished for a compliment. “Do you really think it’s lovely?”

“Dunno, haven’t seen enough of it in the last two millennia,” said Crowley, like an insane person. Perhaps the M25 had burnt a hole in his brain. Perhaps the Bentley’s explosion had knocked loose the last of his screws.

“Are you guys boyfriends?” asked Adam the Antichrist.

Aziraphale stood up as straight as if Heaven itself had yanked on his puppet strings. “Well!” he stuttered. “I say!” he stammered.

“Yup,” said Crowley, deciding for the moment to embrace insanity and see where it took him. What the Hell…so to speak.

“My mum says it’s okay to be gay,” said the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, et cetera, with a shrug. “She says it doesn’t matter who you love, as long as you wait until marriage.”

“Your mum’s a smart woman,” said Crowley, who wasn’t so much _gay_ as he was an ancient and terrifying creature surpassing banal human concepts of sexuality, whose true form would burn a mortal being’s eyes from its very skull as it begged for the release of death. But he did like the music and the dancing. He looked expectantly at the angel, who could well have been a living statue, if that living statue was especially sweaty. “Is that why?” he asked the angel. “Waiting for a ring?”

Aziraphale felt like a bottle rocket seconds from going off. Really! As if that was the problem! “Have you gone mad? A ring?!” is what he intended to say.

“Have you _got_ a ring?” is what he actually said.

Crowley, stunned, said nothing for a moment. Then he concentrated, closing his eyes. No mere snap of the fingers would do here. A wide gold band, intricate and lovingly designed, flickered into shape before him. He plucked it from the ether and presented it to Aziraphale. “Angel?”

Aziraphale gasped. He put a hand to his mouth. Then he put the same hand to his heart, or where a heart would be if—oh, no, yes, this newly manifested form did indeed come with a heart, though it took the common graphical shape found on playing cards and valentines rather than the functional one. Well, the boy had tried. Perhaps anatomy wasn’t taught until secondary school.

No matter; as the angel did not need a heart, its form and function were of no consequence. That the symbolic organ beat much faster and harder now that he was staring at a golden ring proffered to him by Crowley’s slim hand was also, he decided, of no consequence.

“Oh my God,” said the spawn of Satan.

“Don’t bring Her into this,” said Crowley. “Not _now_.”

It didn’t even matter if Aziraphale said no, Crowley thought. He’d just have to keep working at it until Aziraphale said yes. It was like the Arrangement—all he had to do was be patient and wear the angel down over the course of a few centuries. That, or Hell would boil up a great caldron of holy water for him for interfering with their stupid war, and then he’d be demon soup and Aziraphale’s answer wouldn’t matter.

Either way, it didn’t hurt to ask the question. It had hurt very much, some six millennia ago, to Ask Questions, but that was then and this was now, and he could hardly Fall any further.

He’d already fallen quite hard, thank you very much.

“_Crowley_,” Aziraphale exhaled, radiating angelic grace. He hadn’t been this happy since he’d discovered a proper French patisserie on Regent Street twenty years earlier. Shyly, he extended his left hand.

Crowley took it, gallantly kissed it, and then slid the gold band onto its third finger. The ring was a perfect fit, of course. Crowley had made it, so it knew better than to be anything but.

“Awesome,” said the Antichrist.

“Now,” said Crowley, “can we please get the fuck out of here?”

“_Language_,” Aziraphale scolded. “There are children here.”

“He’s the son of—well, he _was_,” Crowley argued, casting a vaguely guilty look at the ex-Lord of Darkness. He took Aziraphale’s be-ringed hand in his own with purpose. Aziraphale startled.

“You can’t miracle us all the way back to London!”

“We haven’t exactly got a ride,” Crowley said. He’d meant to snarl it, but the thought of his poor incinerated car almost moved him to embarrassingly un-demonic tears.

“You can borrow my bike,” Adam offered. “And Pepper’s bike. She doesn’t like it anyway.”

“That’s very kind of you, dear,” Aziraphale said, at the same time as Crowley asked, “Where’s the bus that goes to London?”

“In front of the church on Barrow Road,” Adam said. “Do you have WhatsApp? My mum said I might get a mobile for my birthday.”

Crowley reached into his trousers pocket, which should not have had room to contain anything more substantial than dryer lint but in fact had the same magical expansive properties as Mary Poppins’ carpet bag. He’d watched the film on telly one night, drunk, and found it deeply inspirational. From the impossible pocket he withdrew a business card, black and slightly singed at the edges, and handed it to the boy.

“Stay in school,” he said.

Aziraphale noticed none of this, busy as he was admiring the gleaming band around his finger, Crowley’s own dear fingers entwined, and feeling quite happily liberated. He barely noticed Crowley miracling the two of them away to the bus stop in front of the church—from which they would ride home to London, whether the bus liked it or not—letting time start again and leaving the whole messy business in the doubtlessly capable hands of an American witch, a dotty ginger woman, and the eleven-year-old child they had just tried to murder.

Very responsible of him, Crowley thought with Pride—which was, after all, a deadly sin. His favorite, in fact.

**Author's Note:**

> Aziraphale’s cheerful owning of “southern pansy” was inspirational. You go, <s>boy</s> angel. I figured Crowley would feel similarly, and then this happened.
> 
> Apparently the Athenians really did provide state-sponsored care for the children of their soldiers killed in battle, though the concept of an “orphanage” did not come about until quite a while later.
> 
> _Heartsease_ (also _heart’s ease_) is an old-ish word for tranquility/peace of mind, as well as another name for wild pansies.


End file.
